Hi and welcome to another week,

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas (or the other way around I guess) to one and all.  Having had a couple of weeks away from my ‘weekly’ blog (if you appreciate the irony in that statement we can definitely be friends) I have to admit, I thought I would be bursting with ‘stuff’ to put on paper this beautiful Sunday morning.  As it turns out – not so much…this staring at a screen waiting for words to come out is apparently just as hard after you have had two weeks off as it is if you didn’t have any time off at all…or maybe that is why I am a person who owns a gym rather than a person who writes for a living?

I thought I would be all inspired to write about 2017, new year, new focus, new me, new you, new gym, new excitement – but the honest truth is none of that stuff is really true.  Well, I am sure it could be true, but for me at least I have honestly not really missed a beat in my training over the ‘break’ – I have rolled up and done my 4-5 boxing sessions each week, my 1-2 Body Work/No Rules classes each week…I have ‘tried’ (reasonably) hard to stick to my weights program throughout (I still only ever complete 2-3 days of the 6-days of programming I receive every week but that’s how it goes!) and whilst some of the food and drink habits weren’t great Christmas week, even that seems to have gotten back on course in pretty short order.  I guess in many ways, I am completely ‘institutionalised’ with my training and food at the moment and what I do every week is what I do every week is what I do every week.

I have been sitting here trying to remember when this happened though – because this certainly wasn’t true all of the time.  Back when I lived a corporate life, getting to the gym twice per week was an achievement – and I would regularly prioritise sitting my butt on the lounge watching tv and drinking a beer ahead of getting to the gym…because it was ‘too late’ or I was ‘too tired’ or I was ‘sore from yesterday’ or any number of reasons that at the time seemed perfectly justifiable.  I think back now and wonder how that ever happened but to be fair I was living a different life and even the two gym sessions I was doing most weeks were two more than most of my work colleagues.

As for my food – and I was telling someone this story the other day – I stumbled upon some old food logs I had from my IT days  – a diet I had at the time considered pretty ‘strict’ – well, I certainly thought I was eating a pretty ‘healthy diet’ anyway!  I would look at now and think ‘Man, you can’t be eating all of that…look at all those carbs, what’s with the sugar…’ but at the time I thought I was eating about as clean as clean could be – and again, compared to all my buddies at work, I was.  After all, choosing the blueberry muffin over the choc-chip one at morning tea (to go with the large cap of course) was really showing a bit of restraint.

I can remember our first real food based challenge – it wasn’t ‘28-Days Later’, it was a version of the Whole30 challenge and what we now call ‘28-days Later’ grew out of the ashes of what was called the ‘Life Challenge’ back in April 2013! –  and it was just so damn H-A-R-D.  No bread for a month?  No pasta??  No sugar???  All of those things seemed completely impossible and whilst everyone who participated lost weight and felt better (including me!) the idea that eating that way could be a ‘sustainable’ lifestyle never really stuck with me until probably another 12-18months had passed…now I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I ate pasta and whilst I had bread last Friday night, that is a once in a (very long) ‘while’ thing that is a special treat involving hamburgers – bread just isn’t part of my life any more!

I have told you guys all of these stories before and I guess you might be wondering where I am going with this…and so do I in some ways.  But what I wanted to say is that no matter what goals and targets you have set for yourself to do and achieve in 2017 – don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t quite nail them at the first try.  I was late in life to start a fitness+ health ‘journey’ – but I did have knowledge and the advantage of being in a gym 60-odd hours every week and I still couldn’t seem to quite do it on my first, second or even third try.  For you guys, it is even harder so give yourselves a ‘break’ and just get focussed on resetting and having another crack.  I mean, so what if you fall off the wagon for a day, a week, a month – don’t stress and don’t beat yourself up.  Just get back on the horse.  A month might seem like forever (and yes, your first few classes back are probably going to suck!) – but in the scheme of the rest of your life it isn’t long at all…the sooner you start again, the quick you adjust course, the better for the long run.  Now, that doesn’t mean that we wont dish out a bit of good natured ribbing at the gym if you go missing for a little bit but truthfully we just want to see you in the gym and training – having you back in trying to establish (re-establish?) good training habits is way more important to us than you can ever realise…I feel every week a large portion of our team meeting is dedicated to “I haven’t seen so-and-so for a while, has anyone heard from them”…we want you guys in and training.

Anyway, that’s it.  Play the long game with your goals – it takes a while for habits to ‘stick’ – but if you just persist over time you will win out in the end.

I guess it is good to be back writing on a Sunday afternoon…See you in the gym,

Michael.

Gym Update #1 – New ‘STUFF’ (it’s everywhere!)

So, everything has been painted and the office area + bag storage area have all been completely re-done.  We still have a little bit of work to do in the office to further ‘open up’ the space in there and make it all a bit more useable/client friendly but so far I think everyone would agree the changes have made a big difference to the overall look and feel of the gym.

Following on from this, we still have quite a big change to make out in the gym area.  We are (significantly) reducing our treadmill footprint and creating a ‘stretching zone’ out in the area in front of the tv’s.  We are replacing/upgrading our elliptical trainer.  We are adding a heap of new cardio-focussed ‘death machines’ for use in the boxing classes – which means we will have the ski’s, assault bikes, rowers and our new ‘death machines’ all available for cardio challenges during our classes.

Gym Update #2 – 28-Days Later is COMING

Our annual ’28-Days Later’ challenge is only a few short weeks away – and initial registrations will be up this week.  I have been beavering away on new recipes, creating a new series of challenges AND a new twist on the 28-Days Later formula – ‘The STREAK’.

The results we achieved last year were nothing short of amazing …our total weight loss (for the gym) was 416kgs (an average of 3.76kgs per participant) – and this is despite people who participated GAINING an average of .4kg of muscle during the month…So we all gained muscle and lost fat – sounds AWESOME and I guarantee one thing…if there is only one person in the gym doing the 28-days Later Challenge that person will be ME!

If you have a New Years Resolution relating to your body composition – be it to lose weight, tone-up, get to the gym 3-times each week (or whatever it might be) – then you should think about getting involved in this challenge.  We will be running with an early registration plan this year (which will save you a few $) as when people register ‘LATE’ for this challenge in particular, it really does cause us administrative drama’s due to the need to pull together the recipes, workouts, vouchers etc in a consolidated folder for each participant.

Gym Update #3 – 12-Days of Christmas

A belated congrats to everyone who completed our last challenge – the annual ’12-days of Christmas’ event.  I know for me I was still doing challenge circuits on the very last day before Christmas so I can certainly empathise with everyone who worked so very hard to finish the challenge…the ’12-Days of Christmas’ challenge may not be the toughest physical challenge to get through – in some ways it is the easiest!  But to get through one class every second day at such a busy time of the year is just a massive effort and congratulations are due (however belated) to all of you out there who ‘made it’.

Gym Update #4 – Beach Fit 2016 – Workout of the Week

No post for a couple of weeks, but we are up to WEEK #8 if you can believe it.  The workout rotation for Week#8 is as follows:

If you are following a ‘1-workout per week’ rhythm, you should do WORKOUT#8 this week.

If you are following a ‘3-workout per week’ rhythm, you should do WORKOUT#2, #3 and #4 this week.

Of course, if you are following your own rhythm, AWESOME – continue to do that if it is working for you!

Remember, whether you are on a 1x session per week cycle OR a 3x session per week cycle, it is finding the time to get your food prep done (the beach fit menu is pretty cool, and don’t forget the ‘Food Matters’ Blog will be restarting THIS WEDNESDAY) as well as actually DOING your Beach Blasts – as hard and heavy as you are able – that will make all the difference…well, they had better anyway!  I finished my session yesterday with workout 4 and was ‘unable’ to lift my arms sufficiently to drive my car home for about 10 minutes after finishing – not a fun time.

Gym Update #5 – Food Matters Blog

A new food matters blog + recipe will be coming out this WEDNESDAY, so keep an eye on your inbox!

Gym Update #6 – Round 1 Survey – Feedback

Just a quick follow-up on all of the feedback posted in the survey back in December 2016.  There were a number of responses received to which I commented ‘Please let us know the details so I can get to the bottom of it’ or ‘Please give me some more specific info so I can act’ etc.  Guys, if any of that feedback was yours, please respond to me so I can act on the issues you identified – to this point not one response has been received back from my requests for additional information.  The more info you provide us, the better off the gym will be – remember, we don’t see things through the same ‘eyes’ that you do and sometimes need your help to improve the environment and the service.

If you are worried about the feedback not being anonymous if you email it through, please don’t – my skin is literally 6-inches thick and I promise I wont get upset!

Link of the Week

Footwork for hooks with RJJ:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjA_LvpQ-Sg